By Kefiloe Kajane
Local insurance companies Clientcare Risk Consultants and Alliance General Insurance this week launched a Risk Management and Loss Prevention project aimed at mitigating and reducing risks of fire and related hazards that affect businesses in Lesotho.
According to the companies, their plan is to educate clients on such risks, allow clients to go through a survey which will assess the risks, and to install power surge protectors for all businesses with a high probability of being affected by fire.
Alliance Insurance’s chief operating officer ‘Malengolo Sello disclosed that – over the past few years – there have been a series of accidents involving fire in some of their client factories.
“In 2020 alone, Clientcare client claims exceeding M10million were paid out. Alliance paid out more than M80 million towards the same. These unfortunate occurrences are usually a result of major power outages and also occur after a natural calamity, or a lightning strike. Yet again they can occur as a result of human error such as keeping flammables, moisture and even some hairy fibres which are all potential fire hazards, next to power sources.
“The unfortunate results of these fires include loss of income for many businesses, interrupted product delivery timeliness as well as potential job losses for the employees while such businesses wait to replace, rebuild, and fix any damages that have resulted from these incidents.
“There is also a negative environmental impact from smoke and other chemical reactions. Most importantly, such incidents may result in unfortunate loss of lives or illness for employees who may be at work at the time of such incidents,” Sello said.
Clientcare Risk Consultants’ managing director, Popi Kaiser, said since power surges happen at regular intervals without anyone even knowing about them, it is advisable that valuable production machinery, and other valuable equipment like computers, air conditioning units be always connected to these surge protectors.
Kaiser said Alliance General Insurance and Clientcare Risk Consultants will embark on the initiative countrywide. She said the project will commence with risk surveys, which are part of their risk management prerequisites, before the installations can take place. “Alliance will then provide the apparatus in partnership with the business owners, who will pay just for the installation. Clientcare will play an oversight role to ensure that the project runs smoothly. Once the entire process has taken place, a certificate will be issued for all the business owners who have taken part in this programme,” she said
